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Powell Aide: Bush Admin Run by 'Cabal'

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Colin Powell's former chief of staff at the State Department charges that foreign policy was usurped by a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" and President Bush has made the country more vulnerable to future crises.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who worked for the secretary of state from 2001 to early 2005, told the New America Foundation that secrecy, arrogance and internal feuding had taken a heavy toll in the Bush administration, undercutting its ability to handle crises, the New York Times reports.

"I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita - and I could go on back.

"If something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence."

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  Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College, said what he saw in Bush's first term "was a case that I have never seen in my studies of aberration, bastardizations" and "perturbations,” according to the Times.

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues."

In his speech to the Foundation, an independent public policy institute in Washington, Wilkerson referred to Bush as someone who "is not versed in international relations, and not too much interested in them, either."

He called Bush’s father "one of the finest presidents we've ever had."

Before resigning last year, Powell broke with Bush by declaring that he had been misled by the administration regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. More recently, he has been critical of recovery efforts following Hurricane Katrina.

But Wilkerson – long considered a close confidant of Powell - said Powell did not approve of his latest public criticisms.

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